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GW2 after the initial hype/bugs/etc

Hey all,

me and my wife are considering getting GW2 for xmas. We waited a while to see how it goes after launch, since nowadays it's quite risky with MMOs... (SWTOR anyone?)

We've spent some time watching videos on youtube about different classes and stuff, reviews yada yada, so we are pretty much sold, but still i wanted to ask for an honest opinion on the quality and state of the game nowadays.

So, is it as good as they say? Is it worth the 42 euros? Is the support/patching good? Is the population stable? ...

I can only speak for myself here, but I really like the game. So please keep that in mind when reading the rest of what I have to say, I might be biased.

First of all, I would not recommend the game to someone who is solely interested in the main plot or looking for an engaging personal story. I have only reached the last few missions of a plot line with my main character, a Norn Warrioress. The starting areas and the introductory quests are nicely done and that holds true for nearly every class and race (haven't tried Humans yet). The further personal story quests then proceed to not get into your way if you don't want them to, they are absolutely optional. However, this also lead me to ignore them for a long time because I simply didn't feel that they were very interesting. So there's that.

However, I absolutely adore the general feeling of the game. The way you get rewarded for nearly anything you do (killing enemies, doing small quests, gathering materials, even map exploration) immediately gave me a sense of freedom to do whatever I'd like to do without missing out on possibilities to progress my character. Of course, some quests or tasks might be similar, like "Clean up that farm" and "Help that NPC to clear out that scrap yard". If you hang around the same area for a long time you'll also run into the same dynamic event a couple of times, but that never bothered me too much.

Populationwise, it depends on what you are looking for. If you've already got a guild with some buddies then maybe there is no decision to make. But if you are interested in an active PvP community (important for WvWvW mostly, sPvP shouldn't be an issue), I'd say check out a couple of servers with an intermediate ranking. Some servers are already pretty dead when it comes to server-vs-server fighting (and there are some good reasons for that too) or are struggling to keep up their numbers. More than anything, that's what wins matches at the moment: sheer numbers. We've got some issues with the size of the WvWvW playerbase ourselves at Gunnar's Hold (home to Rock, Paper, Signet - EU server) but most of the people that participate in WvWvW don't care too much about the score. On the plus side, we've got an excellent and organised community to rely on.

What's more to say? The game is currently still in a phase of settling down - that's the impression I got. Patches are coming in regularly, as well as exta content and holiday events which are good fun. What I mean with "settling down" is that ArenaNet is still trying to figure out how to best cater to the different tastes of their player base. Recently there was a big discussion about the addition of an extra tier of gear, which many people feared would be the beginning of a gear treadmill. Personally, I don't care so much about getting the top-tier gear straight away on all my characters, so that's mostly a non-issue for me. Same goes for skill balancing and changes to dungeons and instances. As long as I've got access to anything I'd like to experience, I am happy. And that is still the case. Expect more updates in the future though, at the moment one cannot really say where things are going with paid-for expansion either (which have been announced to happen at some point in the future).

Finally, considering the community, there should be lots of people at various levels and stages of the game. Down-scaling is something that allows higher level characters to return to areas with lower level requirements without letting them mow down everything, so it's unlikely you won't be able to find people to play with. If you are looking for an EU server, we are more than happy to take you in, even if it is only for a trial (at the moment you can switch servers every seven days without any fee).

All in all, I'd say the game is worth it's cost, at least for me. No idea how other people - especially ex-WoWers - feel about it.

Edit: I also wanted to say that the game is really beautiful and full of little details. If you get something out of wandering through the game world looking at scenery, then you'll most certainly enjoy GW2.

This is a post maninly about WvWvW & the server we play (Gunnar's Hold)

I don't play all that much, usually only in the mornings or evenings doing WvW.. I got bored of the PvE pretty quick.. And that's coming from me, someone who only plays MMOs for the PvE, as I usually hate PvP.

WvW has a different feel to it, its just so awesome having lots of players by your side fighting back the enemy and taking keeps 24/7.

Also with it being free to play, it's just another one of those games where you can pick it up and put it back down whenever you please, the initial cost is there sure, but you can log in whenever you like.

:Edit: We may not have the biggest and best WvW playerbase, but the community is there, and that's what is keeping me playing.. The community mumble is just so much fun.

I guess it's as good as i imagine it to be (i actually tried the beta, seemed good but had hardware problems so i couldn't play for more than a couple of minutes).

We are both ex wow-players with my wife, and i am ex-almost-anything player (played tons of UO, EVE, WoW, gazillion of other mp or sp games). We like having fun, exploring, dungeons and PvP, everything that a wow-like MMO could provide. I am more of a fan of open world games, such as UO or EVE, where death has it's consequences, you can kill and rob everyone, etc... but i can also enjoy more "softcore" games. My wife loves exploring and achievements most, i guess, in mmos.
However, we are getting old, have kids and stuff, so we probably lack the time to dedicate on super-hardcore play such as WoW would require for top-tier raids etc. So if GW2 requires that (playing 4-5 hours straight to kill 2 bosses on a raid) we will probably not participate.

I have played GW1 a bit, and i liked how items had no big importance, especially in pvp where you could just get the top items and go with them, with "farming" only being important for cosmetics. Is that still the case with GW2 or is it more item-centry in a wow-like fashion?

Another thing: About the "no tanks, no healers" thing - does it really work? I love games that try to break the holy trinity of tank-healer-dps, but they usually fail (Vanguard and Conan?)...

And while we are speaking about classes - are the classes balanced or there are some underdogs and imbas? What class are you / have you played?

- Dungeons usually don't take longer than 2 hours, if you are new to them. Repeated runs are much quicker, 30mins - 1 hour is my personal experience. I don't do a lot of dungeoneering, so maybe one of the other guild mates can say a bit more about that.

- Gear progression is not as bad as it is in WoW, but it is a bit more pronounced than in GW1. You usually progress your gear at the same pace you progress in level. Apart from the absolute maximum stats gear everything is pretty cheap to buy on the Trading Post as well, so you don't really need to farm to get better stuff.

- About the "holy trinity": Every class has self-heals and combo-fields that grant special effects, also defensive ones, to yourself and others when combined with certain skills, but there is no dedicated healer role. Some classes can actually tank (like Warriors for example), but there is no "tanking" mechanisms per se, no single character can soak up all the damage a boss dishes out, everyone needs to look after him/herself, but also after others. Getting downed players up is very important in higher level instances, especially dungeons, which are capped at 5 players. Teamplay is mandatory.

- Finally class balance. At the moment, some classes have very strong builds available (Thiefs and Guardians come to mind), but every class is viable. In PvP class dominance heavily depends on the matchup. I've seen as many strong Engineer builds as I've seen Necromancers or Mesmers or Warriors or Guardians or whatever. Personally, I have played Warrior to 80, Thief to 80, Ranger to 80, Mesmer to ~30-40, a new Engineer to ~15 and a bit of Guardian to ~8. All were/are fun to play in my experience.

Nice, sounds good to me.
We'll most likely join you guys when we get the game, around x-mas. We'll be playing a guardian and ranger, i suppose.

As for the PvE - So there's no raids like in wow? And with no tanking mechanics, the bosses/mobs are designed to work well? How is "aggro" treated - the AI? Do they attack at random or do they try to go for weaker heroes or what?

Concerning aggro, I'll just link to the wiki-article, as I can't say with certainty how the exact mechanism works. My impression is that initial aggro is drawn by the person attacking a mob but can then shift to another character if the initiator of a fight disengages.

As you say you both enjoy exploring I'd say the game is worth buying for that alone. The world is huge and gorgeous with lots of little secrets to find, sights to see, events to stumble into, mini dungeons to battle through, jumping puzzles to solve and so on. By the time you've leveled up you should feel that you've already gotten your money's worth and had a good time along the way.

The long term end game goals might feel a bit more grindy but only if you're after very specific pieces of equipment, like fancy exotic gear (for looks) or ascended items (only needed for the fractal dungeons on high difficulty). You can access and complete any content in the game without having to upgrade any gear and nothing is gated.

edit:

Originally Posted by Hunchback

As for the PvE - So there's no raids like in wow? And with no tanking mechanics, the bosses/mobs are designed to work well? How is "aggro" treated - the AI? Do they attack at random or do they try to go for weaker heroes or what?

There are no raid dungeons like in WoW but there is no lack of huge boss fights with lots of players participating. If you played WoW from the start or during BC you might have seen the world bosses like Azuregos or Kazzak and GW2 has some similar bosses although in the form of events and they don't need an organised pre-made raid group to take down. For example there are three huge dragon fights in different parts of the world that are on a 3 hour timer. Another example are the temples in Orr (a high level area) that are guarded by powerful mobs which players can band together to defeat, taking over the temple which gives access to high level gear vendors and other advantages.

There are lots of other such fights (most zones have at least one big event) and they scale depending on how many players are participating.

edit again:
As for aggro, mobs generally seem to go for the player that's closest to them. Sometimes they'll "stick" to one target and chase it around but there seems to be a lot of factors going into it and it's not easy to predict who's going to be attacked next. There's also the fact that attacks for both players and mobs are either cone attacks or area of effect, so if you're standing in front of a big bad boss you're likely to get hit even if you're not specifically the one who has aggro.

That may sound like fights would end up being chaotic and random and they often do, but every class has plenty of ways to either disengage from combat or take a few hits. As has already been mentioned, getting knocked down and reviving people is very much part of how big fights work in GW2, so even if you're squishy it's not the end of the world if a big bad boss takes an interest in you.

One more thing: Pay 2 Win - What's the situation with the notorious f2p/p2w model? I know you can buy gems or whatever with real money, but what can you buy with those? Do they give a real advantage over others or is it just cosmetics and/or faster exp?

It is not pay2win if you don't count XP booster as that. The Gem Store entry on the GW2 Wiki has (nearly) all items listed that are for sale, so you can have a look for yourself if you'd like to get an impression what kind of stuff is available. Apart from buying gems for real money, you can also get them with in-gamw currency. However, the exchange rate of gems/in-game currency (not gems/$) is not fixed and has been rising (i.e. gotten worse) since launch.

During the first weeks after launch I have bought several bank expansion slots (really handy to have) and one additional character slot with gems (which I got for gold). At that time the exchange rate was at ~20 silver for 100 gems. Now it is at ~2 gold (200 silver) for 100 gems. No idea why I didn't invest more money back then, I could cry myself to sleep over that. It should be said that prices may be that high at the moment because Wintersday (Christmas event) is coming and people expect new and fancy items to be available at the gem store.

By the way, getting the game for Christmas might be a good idea, since you then can experience an in-game event/holiday season right away. I always loved those in GW1 and Halloween in GW2 has also been great.

I played a lot at launch and then took a break before recently getting back into it. I'd put that down more to my play style, work, and a raft of single player games I was eagerly awaiting more than the game though.

Store
Real money stores always get me worried but so far the GW2 one appears relatively benign. Most items are cosmetic or account service upgrades (bank slots, character slots). While you can get gems for in game gold the exchange rate is high enough that your not likely to be able to do this before you're in the end game and more free to accumulate large sums. I've certainly not spent any real money on it so far and don't feel like I'm missing out much if anything.

About the only iffy part is the black lion chest/key combination. Chests drop from game quite often but getting keys is hard outside the gem shop. That said the contents of the chests isn't earth shattering and you wont miss out of fall behind if you just ignore them.
Leveling
If your sticking to just PVE then there are a couple of places where I've found the levelling rate to be a bit off compared to the expected progression through the zones. I get the feeling they assumed you would do the dungeons as soon as they unlocked (they tend to award at least a level when you first do them).

Throw in some PVP, sPVP, crafting (worth quite decent XP), exploring, jump puzzles etc. and everything flows a lot better. I guess the moral of that story is not to get to focused in on powering through the events take some time to see what else the game offers as you go.

Mechanics
I've only played the elementalist to any significant level and it's pretty good. It does tend to fall back on a fixed rotation with a few emergency buttons (but that's pretty much true of any MMO). Where it is better than most is that even the cloth classes have defensive tricks and self healing. You can spec out to glass cannon if you want but even then it's more stompy than most MMOs. Spec for defensive and you can take a fair beating.

It also has some truly impressive combos and abilities that are fun to watch (lighting scepter/dagger is particularily flashy).

I play mage types in every game I can and I'd rate GW2 as the best MMO incarnation for flexibility and fun.

Personal Story
I quite like the personal story. The writings a bit basic in places and the missions don't tend to deviate too much from what you get in the normal PVE events but it gives a nice bit of story over your progression and helps drive you from zone to zone.

It does have a problem that later stages sometimes don't respect earlier stages. But that's been confined to simply not respecting the fact you've actually met some characters before and once where the description of past events didn't match what actually happened in those events. It was all pretty minor stuff though.

I do like that each race gets multiple starting story paths and that once the race arcs merge into the overall story arc it still has a number of branch points so that alts don't have to do all the same missions.

Bugs/Glitches/Updates
GW one was very well supported over the years and I don't see any sign that their doing anything less for GW2.

I've not had too many serious bugs. Never been hit by a hard blocker and only crashed to desktop a couple of times.

There are however a reasonable number of little glitches. I've stuck in terrain a couple times (map travel or /stuck and do nothing for 30secs to fix) coming out of cinematics, there has been an occasional time where spoken dialog is missing, etc. Nothing too serious and generally not worth much more than a <tsk> noise and moving on.

The biggest problem for me at the moment is Lions Arch. It's become the main city hub for the game and loading into it can take some time (a minute or 2 for me). Once in it runs fine however (and is fantastic to explore and look at).

Heh. The other people in this thread have already pretty much perfectly articulated what I was going to say, so I'll keep it simple:

Guild Wars 2 has something for everyone. People who claim that it's just another 'run-of-the-mill MMO' either have not played it at all, or have played it a little while without actually attempting to get involved in the community.

This game is an MMO and playing it with other people (namely the members of our RPS guild and the wider server community) has made by time with it very, very enjoyable. I've been playing the game from launch and I don't have decent loot, only one character at maximum level and am generally pretty shit with my class, but the whole attitude of the game lends itself so well to social play that I can discard all of my own fallacies and have a good 3 or 4 hour romp in its WvWvW zones after work.

I'd say the guild is mixed, some of us prefer PvE, others PvP or a mix, it's organised like a herd of cats, but if you want to do something then advertise in guild chat or on these forums and usually you'll find someone willing to join in. If the guild chat looks a little empty at times it's because we are busy, but we are always on hand for advice and talking utter rubbish (at least in my case).

Server population is fine, it's not a ghost town, and when an area gets too busy then players are shunted into cross-server overflows (be careful, you could end up in Spanish Lion's Arch and be forced to take a siesta).

The main advantage of the game for me is the lack of a monthly fee, some weeks I just don't have the time, but I don't feel like I'm wasting money like in WoW and I play at a much more leisurely pace. Overall, I've found the game to be friendlier and much less progression focused than my previous MMOs.

Heya, just thought I'd offer my perspective. Also someone with a family, and all that. My gaming history in recent times seems quite similar to yours, Hunchback: lots of WoW, anyway! I'm currently on a break from GW2, where I play an engineer called Even Orizon in the RPS guild. I played from release at a pretty constant couple hours a night for the first month: came back for the Halloween event, briefly, then back for the Lost Shores event, and hung around for a while after that, too. I was initially persuaded to buy, having been meaning to wait, like you, until the game was established, by the company's attitude to promoting in-game decency -- handing out bans for bad behaviour and cheating fairly aggressively -- which led me to believe the game might be a more pleasant place to play than most online environments. Happily, that has been my experience over all.

My main activity at first was dungeons, which I found totally compelling after years of WoW's mechanics. The group dynamics can be really fascinating once you find a role and master your class, though the learning curve is pretty punishing. Sometimes it just doesn't work, the combinations of class, playstyle, and abilities fails. But that's rare. Some of the new fractals dungeons represent the best content -- I hate that term, actually, but there it is -- I've ever encountered in an online game, or in gaming full stop. Several of the set-piece encounters are just beautifully designed, with a flair which recalls the good old days of table-top RPGs. WvWvW, too, can beat absolutely anything on offer in WoW or any other MMO I've played, when it's good, which it often is.

What makes the game really stand out are the collaborative encounters you can get into with strangers. WvW is great for that: hooking up with a random new friend to achieve minor victories around the edge of the main struggle is really satisfying, and the big battles, even when they are losing struggles, can provide opportunities for heroic and collective battling which are incredibly intense. The RPS community is friendly, large, and quirky. There are lots of silent members, but enough who contribute to guild chat and activities that you never feel wholly alone, and Gunnar's Hold is an excellent server, much underrated by those who play there, largely because of its lack of success in WvW. As others have pointed out, this just doesn't matter when you are actually engaged in fighting for short-term objectives.

Anyway, I'm getting distracted -- prevaricating from doing some work. I wanted to say, more than anything, that this is the friendliest MMO for mature gamers I've played. You can put it down and pick it up without feeling that the game's left you behind. It's compelling but not particularly addictive, certainly not exploitative like WoW -- I just spent a few hours in Pandaria on the free trial, climbing back onto my Druid, and found the game utterly hollow, almost vindictively so. GW2 has changed my expectations; made me a better gamer, reminding me of what we are entitled to expect from the enormous exercise of human commitment and creativity that is poured into designing MMOs. It's far from perfect, but it's a welcome dose of strong coffee after the endless drooling ketamine highs of Warcraft and its clones.